Contemporary Commentary for the 21st Century by Wallace Ford

Three Strikes and You’re Out!

As soon as Barack Obama was re-elected president (I just love the way that phrase rolls across the page) it took about two hours for new battle lines to be drawn. The fiscal “cliff” negotiations were anticipated since the January 1, 2013 was set in place over a year ago. The battle regarding U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is the outlier. In opposing her presumed nomination to become Secretary of State the Teapublicans, John McCain and Lindsey Graham in particular, are seriously wrong on three counts – and three strikes and you’re out!

First, the Teapublicans who are lining up to form a human wall of opposition to Ambassador Rice’s presumed nomination are by and large hypocrites of the first order. Staunch pitchfork and torch bearers and like Senators McCain and Graham are claiming that Dr. Rice is not trustworthy or qualified.

Yet these same senators voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. That Dr. Rice as head of the National Security Council presided over the 9/11 fiasco, the greatest lapse in American intelligence since the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. That Dr. Rice also helped orchestrate a symphony of misstatements and mistruths – “mushroom clouds over the Middle East” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” – that led to the calamitous and disastrous American military engagement in Iraq at a cost to this country of over a trillion dollars, over 4000 killed, over 40,000 injured and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

That Dr. Rice’s resume describes an untrustworthy and horrific record in security and foreign policy matters. Senators McCain and Graham voted to confirm her as Secretary of State without so much a muttering word of question or dissent. They are wrong for being hypocrites. Strike One.

On the other hand, Dr. Susan Rice seems to have trained her entire academic and professional life to become Secretary of States beginning with her being selected as a Rhodes Scholar. Her work in the State Department of the Clinton Administration is unquestionably excellent and her work as United States Ambassador to the United Nations has been a portrait of diplomatic skills at the highest level.

The Terrible Teapublican Twins McCain and Graham would like to nail the Benghazi tragedy onto Dr. Susan Rice’s record. In an effort to turn a tragedy into a scandal McCain and Graham would have us believe that the American Ambassador to the United Nations had some operational responsibility in Libya. The concept is so ridiculous it could only be a Teapublican talking point.

But McCain and Graham know the truth – former CIA Director David Petraeus told them. Essentially, Ambassador Rice was not permitted to make references to terrorist involvement in Benghazi in her initial statements because it would have compromised security and military initiatives that targeted those same terrorists. For pretending not to understand how the real world works and for trying to destroy the reputation of a lifelong public servant who has served this country well, McCain and Graham are wrong. Strike Two.

Finally, the Teapublican Twins seem to be hell-bent on ignoring the fact that Barack Obama is the President of the United States and on 11.6.12 was reelected as President of the United States. The United States Constitution is very clear in giving the president the power to appoint Cabinet members. And while the Senate is designated to provide advice and consent to such appointments, in over 200 years a presidential cabinet appointment has rarely been blocked and then in cases of outright fraud or suspicion of serious misdeeds.

Nothing like that has even been alleged with respect to Ambassador Rice, even by McCain and Graham. What we are seeing is a Capitol Hill Teapublican Temper Tantrum – they cannot get over the fact that President Obama won and that they lost. Ambassador Rice’s nomination as Secretary of State, should it be forthcoming (I personally hope that she is nominated), simply offers the Teapublicans another opportunity to obstruct.

Over the past four years President Obama has selected an entire Cabinet, two Supreme Court justices, numerous ambassadors and countless other officials – exercising his judgment in each instance. The American people saw his judgment at work in real time and reelected him with over 330 electoral votes and by more than 3 million actual votes.

For not acknowledging political reality and dragging partisanship to a new low, McCain and Graham are wrong again. Strike Three…….and you’re out!